Short Bio:
Chad Mirkin is the Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology and the Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Medicine at Northwestern University. He is known for his discovery and development of spherical nucleic acids (SNAs) and many contributions to nanobiomedicine, nanolithography, supramolecular chemistry, and nanoparticle synthesis. He has authored over 660 manuscripts and over 1,000 patent applications (290 issued worldwide), and he is the founder of multiple companies. Mirkin has received over 100 national and international awards, and at present, he is an Associate Editor of Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Abstract:
The development of cantilever-free scanning probe techniques has allowed inexpensive, reproducible, and high-throughput patterning of both hard and soft nanomaterials over large areas. Specificallyscanning probe block copolymer lithography (SPBCL) allows one to generate nanoreactors consisting of polymers loaded with metal precursors, which upon thermal treatment can be converted into well-defined nanoparticles. Since one can finely tune both the size and composition of the polymer nanoreactors, nanoparticles of complex compositions can be synthesized with control over size from the 1 to 50 nm length scale. Furthermore, by using 1 million pyramidal pens in a single array, one can probe a wide variety of nanoparticles that systematically vary in size and composition. Nanoparticle libraries made in this manner can be metals, metal oxides, multimetallic alloys, and janus structures. This novel approach lays the foundation for creating new libraries of materials, where scale, in addition to composition becomes an important library parameter.